Ingredients
- 1 whole beef tongue (usually around 3.3 pounds/ 1½Kg)
- 1 onion coarsely chopped
- 1 carrot coarsely chopped
- 1 Persian lemon (dried lime) , crumbled
For the stew:
- 2 onions sliced lengthwise
- 2 black Persian lemons soaked in water
- 4 clusters of sour grapes or ripe grapes that are as hard as possible
- Salt
- 1 spoon tarragon chopped
Instructions
The tongue
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1. Place the tongue in a pot, cover with salted water and bring to a boil. Lower the flame and skim the scum floating on top. Add the onion, carrot and Persian lemon and cook over a medium flame for about 3 hours over a medium flame. Remove the tongue from the pot (but reserve the liquid) and let it cool down a bit. Peel off the membrane skin covering the meat and then cut the tongue into slices around half an inch/ 1½ cm thick.
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2. Braise the tongue slices in a nonstick frying pan (without any oil) until they start to brown. Remove the meat and fry the 2 additional onions in the same pan for about 30 minutes until golden brown.
The stew
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3. Drain the black lemons, break them up and crumble them, and add to the fried onions. Add a few ladles of the liquid reserved from cooking the tongue as well as the clusters of grapes. Season with salt and pepper. Lower the flame and cook for about 20 minutes. Add the tongue and continue cooking for another 20 minutes.
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4. Transfer the stew to a serving plate and garnish with chopped tarragon.
The recipe was first published in “Hashulchan”.